Why are advertisers banners being removed from some (to date) community forums?

 

If a community chooses to run their own banners then they can. Each community sets their own commercial posting rules. Some allow it, some don't. Some charge, some don't. The larger and more organized communities will typically run their own banners and have their own local sponsors. The others will run the s2ki banners. There is the option for the community organizers to work within the ad system and make their zones available to all sponsors that want to run banners but we are a bit behind on educating them on how to do this.

I am planning to have the two sets of banners merged but this requires a software change.

 

I'm pretty sure those communities that choose not to display our banners will still want to benefit from vendor discounts.

 

So what forums are our banner being displayed? You know, might not be reaching the demoghaphic market segment we are trying to.
The real issue here is, again we have a supprise that was not disclosed prior to implementation or prior to it impacting us.

I understand the technical challanges presented by an operation like this, the communication about these changes is always delivered post change, or we are left to figure it out for our selfs. This needs to change.

So how do you get our banners to run in those area? Do we have to have additional accounts? One for each communities?

 

Hey, this is Chris with Grille-Tech.

I don't even advertise on here anymore. Every time I turned around this site was increasing the cost or moving my banner to places no one looks. They are selling parts and accessories now so I think they want to push us all out. $50 to list a group buy now!! We don't list them anymore. We now have to keep tabs on how much money is in the pay per click account. We don't have time for this crap!! Why they couldn't have just left well enough alone. They cornered the market on S2000 forums and are now trying to corner the market on distributing parts for the S2000.

It's flat out wrong!! I have found other ways to market our products and doing fine. If I find another S2000 forum, I'll advertise on it. Oh yeah, I used to advertise on RSXworld.com a site owned by the same people. They sold it, didn't tell me about it and continued to charge me foe months after the fact. My advice to advertisers on here would be to simply not put anymore money in your account and find other avenues to sell your products. Maybe then they would go back to the way that works. I doubt it.

 

Sorry Chris,

What you say is just plain wrong. I'm not saying that in a negative way, just that it is completely false and clearly I've done a horrible job explaining this to the sponsors.

The first inaccuracy is that rsxworld.com was not sold, it was closed down. It ceased to operate and was redirected to clubrsx.com so RSX owners wouldn't be hung out to dry. It was closed for a number of reasons I can go over privately if you wish. We still own the domain name and no money changed hands. I arranged with Chris at ClubRSX to take it over. Your account was mistakenly billed for the rsxworld.com sponsorship after it closed and after realizing the problem your account was credited in full. It was an administrative over-site. You were the only one with sponsorship on both sites and I neglected to adjust your billing amount.

The second is your ads have not been moved to obscure places. It was moved from the bottom of the page to the top of the page and increased in size from 468x60 pixels to 728x90 pixels. If you look at your banner you can see I resized it for you to the new size adding a black border to fill the new and unused area. I sent numerous emails to the sponsors about submitting new artwork for the new size which some either didn't respond to or felt that the massive increase in banner size was an inconvenience.

The third is your pricing did not go up, far from it. It went down, way down.

As a gold sponsor under the old system you had a banner at the bottom of the page which was 468x60 pixels. You paid a flat $110 each month for this banner. In an effort to control the number of group buys being posted which left little for anyone to sell we introduced a maximum of 2 group buys per month in that price about a year ago. Your banner received on the order of 250 clicks each month.

If you assume that you used both of those GBs each month, which you did not, then under the current pricing structure you would have paid $100 in group buys and $10 for the banner for a total of $110 each month ($100 in GBs and $10 in advertising @ 250 clicks for $0.04 per click).

If you posted one GB each month then that would be $50 in GBs and $60 for the banner @ 250 clicks for $0.24 per click.

If you posted one GB every 2 months then that would average out to $25 per month in GBs and $85 for the banner @ 250 clicks for $0.34 per click.

I really don't understand how I have increased the price If anything I gave you a bigger ad in a better spot for less money, much less.

Here are the hard facts:

In the month of October you spent $48.42 for you banner. You received 384 clicks on 526,839 impressions at a fixed rate of $0.12 per click (the rate for the banner at the top of the page). That's a click-through rate of 0.07%. You posted no Group Buys and therefore paid nothing for them.

Under the old system I would have billed you $110 in October. Under the new system I billed you exactly $48.42. What am I missing? You received 384 clicks vs. 250 as you would have under the old system, an increase in traffic of 65% over March (where the 250 comes from) at a discount of more than 50%. Even if you had posted a GB in October you would have still come out ahead. Granted it would have cost more if you had bothered to update your banner but it would have resulted in more traffic and would in most months still been less than what you were paying.

You pay for exactly what you get under the new system. If somebody clicks your ad, you pay. If they don't, you don't. If you post a GB you pay. If you don't, you don't pay. The more you advertise the more it costs but on the flip side there is a 1:1 correlation between value received and money spent. If your costs go up month over month then so does your traffic. If that's not turning into sales for you then you need to seriously reconsider where your banner is sending people. Once they get to your site it's your responsibility to convert them into a customer. We can't control where they end up after they leave s2ki nor whether they are motivated to buy the products you advertise.

Fourth, we don't sell anything except advertising, memberships and hopefully someday some merchandise. Rylan Hazelton owns and operates Go Fast Labs and in consideration for the huge amount of work he's put into s2ki over the past 4 years has been granted the right to use the S2KI Marketplace name for his business. He has also arranged for a knockout price on bandwidth and rack space for the S2KI servers and in consideration for this is alloted 3 banner spots. Neither S2KI nor I own or control any part of Go Fast Labs. They are a completely independent business. S2KI receives no benefit from GFL sales other than a 5 to 10% discount for members, a great deal on Internet service and Rylan's labor in administering and maintaining our servers, fixing bugs and adding features.

Jeff,

Your banners run in the main S2KI forums (General Interest, Special Interest, Off Topic, MarketPlace) and all communities which don't run their own banners. Those who run their own banners are presently UK, Toronto, Arizona, Alabama and the Northeast (from memory). The aim is to allow the larger and more organized communities generate revenue or other benefits from sponsorship in their community forums. We don't get involved in the local aspects of communities including who their sponsors are or what benefits they receive from them.

As the software stands each community can open their advertising zone to all vendors and set the price for advertising in that zone, either per diem, flat rate or per click. Any registered S2KI vendor would then be able to run a banner in that community zone. There are a number of problems with this arrangement and therefore right now all of the community zones are managed by the COs exclusively. If you want to run a banner in them you would need to contact each community and arrange it. There are problems with this arrangement as well.

Our relationship with the regional and local communities is rather complex. They operate more or less independently within the community of all S2000 clubs and communities known as S2KI. The idea is to create a complete and all encompassing community and avoid duplication. There are territorial issues when we start dictating to individual communities the way things are. To keep the entire worldwide community together we have to do a lot of compromising and grant a fair amount of control to the communities. That includes sponsorship for some. Each community is operated differently which only compounds the issues.

I am working on the next update of the Vendor Center right now which will include a number of enhancements. The most relevant is that community banners will be merged and rotated with the global banners in each community. Thus the UK forum will show BOTH UK banners and S2KI banners not just UK banners as they are now. Another enhancement is related to billing. This is going to be dramatically simplified and much more automatic. You will enter your payment information in your account and a monthly expenditure budget. After that you won't need to deposit money or closely manage your account as is the case now. Each month your credit card will be billed up to the amount of your budget for the expenses incurred. If you get close to your budget you will get an email telling you so. You will also receive a statement each month detailing the expenses and the payment(s) along with statistical information including geographic data allowing you to make better use of your advertising.

It seems the current system is either too complex or too inconvenient for most. This next update will address that issue specifically. I'm not sure when it will come out as I'm still working on parts of it but it will be very soon and as soon as I can get it done.

Muz,

Your concerns of exposure are addressed above. Nothing with respect to community forum banners has changed. In the past, for longer than a year, some communities have run their own banners in place of the s2ki ones. The community sponsorship policy has been in place for a long time. What has changed recently is that the new system has made it easier for communities to run their own banners and therefore a few more of them are. This will be offset by the merging of the two banner sets with the next release of the ad software I'm working on.

I think that of all of the long-term sponsors you are unique in the price hike due to the fact that you were a Gold sponsor previously and paying about half the going rate. Your rate is now more in line with what the other sponsors were and are paying. Your rate of $75/month was not only in place and unchanged for 4 years but was dramatically less than even the next lowest paying sponsor, more than 25% less (see Grille-tech's rate above). Those paying the least previously will see the largest increase and those paying the most will see the largest decrease. The pricing ranged from $75/month on the low side to $325/month on the high side. The new system provides much greater parity and it seems a great deal of confusion, misunderstanding and mathematical error.

I hope I've addressed everything and that it all make a bit more sense than it did. I will be sending out an email to all sponsors and prospects with information about the new update and other sponsors related news and info once the update gets a bit closer to ready.